Lightroom Classic is a great tool for organizing images but duplicate keywords create confusion and slow down your workflow. In this tutorial, we’ll walk you through five steps that you can follow to remove duplicate keywords from your Lightroom Classic Catalog.
If you follow these steps in order then you can declutter your Keyword List without losing the ability to find your favorite images with a keyword search at some point in the future.
In a perfect world, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic would prevent us from creating duplicate keywords in the first place but this program currently lacks this kind of intelligence. Instead, duplicate keywords often get created when you mix flat and hierarchical keywords together.
Keyword hierarchies, where one keyword is nested inside of another, sound like a good idea on paper, but in reality, a flat list of keywords is the superior choice for most photographers.
I urge you to practice caution when creating new keywords once you have removed all of the duplicate keywords from your Catalog. Stay away from using the “Put New Keywords Inside Of This Keyword” command as it can lead to unnecessary hierarchical structures and duplicate entries.
With a clean keyword list, you can focus on what you do best – capturing and editing stunning photographs!